Step into today's short stuff to learn all about the armless wonder!
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Hey, I'm welcome to the short stuff. I'm josh, there's chuck. Neither one of us have four arms, which means that this is the short stuff about Venus de Mila. Let's go. That's right. Who resides in the louver, right? I think since eighteen twenty one when Louis the what is that eight No, yeah, the eighteen man. You threw me off. Always forget how to read those. It's been a while. Yeah, Louis the eighteenth donated Venus de Mila, one of the most famous dare I say statues in the world. Yeah. Also, just as a little a side chuck, if you ever kind of get tripped up by something like that, you're talking to somebody, just swap it out for like a word like Louis the Magnificent, but say it authoritatively and the person will think that that's the name for that particular right, Louis the Overeater. So yeah, So the Venus to my Hello first ended up in Paris in eighty one. Apparently that was um that was a really good timing because the nation of France was kind of in the doll drums as far as art is concerned. Right, Yeah, there's a gentleman that will make a couple of appearances in this episode. His name is Andrew Stewart, and uh, I think he's a professor right art art historian and professor, Yeah, professor of Greek Studies at UC Berkeley emeritus too. Oh well, yeah, the guy knows what he's talking about. Yeah. So apparently France, uh, they needed their national pride kind of picked up, and apparently Venus went a long way toward doing that. Yeah, because Napoleon had sacked a bunch of countries and city states and nations art collections plundered, and after the French Revolution, Um well no, that was way after the French Revolution, after Napoleon was banished, We'll say that France had to give back a lot of that art. So the Louver kind of got sacked in verse. And then also the big dumb rival England, from France's vantage point of course, not mine, had just acquired the Elgin Marbles, which meant that they had a some sculpture by the greatest sculpture of antiquity known to humanity. Faddists, Yeah, I got it. Um. So the Venus de Milo comes along and they're like this, this, this is the most important thing I ever found. Let's um bandy it about as much as possible as such. Yeah, and the whole thing with Venus de Milo is sort of the mystery surrounding the origins and who the artist was and who maybe she had been she may have been, and and of course the big question is two questions, what happened to those arms and what will those arms are doing right before they were broken off, which I have to admit I'd never thought of until reading this. Yeah, I just never thought of her arms were doing anything of note, it's kind of weird now that think about it. But the funny thing is is, like you said, she shrouded in mystery as to her identity. But the one thing we know for certain she is not is Venus, the goddess of love to Rome. She was Greek and produced by the Greeks, so she would have been aphrodite at best, but we're not even sure she's aphrodite. She could be a number of other people that have been proposed, or a number of other goddesses. It didn't even have to be a goddess, right, No, it didn't. I saw that she could have been an everyday person. But also, um, she was found on me losch Uh, the Greek island which was really engaged in the sea as far as trade and fishing and all that. So some people have supposed that she was um actually Amphra Tidy in Amphatidy is there an r in there, thank you chuck, um, that she's the goddess of the sea, Poseidon's old lady. As far as iikers would say, Yeah, and in Venus was always thought to be classical, but I think they did enough digging and found that she was actually neo classical, uh and not classical, although they say they sometimes still refer to her as a masterpiece of the classical classical genre. Yeah, because she again kind of carries France's national ego on her shoulders. Um. So the idea that she was you know, created by some unknown master far back in antiquity, um, in the classical period is is kind of you know, part of France's pride in this thing. But supposedly, yeah, they figured out there was a German archaeologist named Adolph seriously fort Wrangler, I love that man's last name, foot thinker who that's even better, who basically said, yeah, she's she's neo classical. You can tell from how she's dressed. But then I guess they also when she was found, they discovered a pedestal that had the sculptor's signature UM that showed that she was very clearly created UM by a guy named Alexandro's of Magnesia, not to be confused with the milk of Magnesia, but that would be. But then they lost it. They conveniently lost this pedestal and said, no, no, this this is clearly created by one of the masters. We just don't know which one, right, So good set up. I think we should take a little break and talk about those arms. I'm dina know about the arms right after this. Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh can chuck it stuff you should know, all right? Arms? Yeah? So again, never thought that her arms were doing anything. I think I just assumed she was being like like, hey, how's it going, I'm holding my hands out here, yeah, or maybe like I don't know kind of thing um. But there there has been a lot of debate about what was going on with her arms. Apparently, at some point, an arm that would fit this statue, the venus de milo Um an arm holding an apple was found, and they think it's possible. Some people think it's possible that that was originally attached to the venus to Milo. Yeah, and we should also point out there were some other things missing from the original statue, like originally she supposedly had metal jewelry bracelet earrings in a headband because they're little fixation holes on those places in her body. And they think that she might have also been painted at one point and now that had it away, and then the arms were I guess maybe some people might think if they never looked into it, that you never had the arms, but they were broken off because you can see where that there were the dowel rods and everything. Because it wasn't carved as one big piece. You know, these arms were put on afterward. But um, yeah, like you said, they found an arm with an apple, and some people are like, well, yeah, she was holding an apple on one of those hands, which actually fits. There's a Greek myth called the Judgment of Paris about a mythological um contest between Aphrodite, the goddess of love, hera Zeus's wife, and Athena, the goddess of war and um this contest between them was won by Aphrodite and the prize was an apple, So this would have kind of commented on the judgment of Paris and Aphrodite winning this. And apparently it's symbolic of like the choice that that people have in life, or that men back in ancient Greece had right. So, um, your your choice in life was between love, war and politics, Aphrodite Athena or hera um and the Aphrodite one that people wanted to they wanted they wanted to live with their heart. That's what the statue symbolize in that sense. Yeah, and that's one take on it. Um. I like this other one a lot. This woman Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who's professor Emerita of Archaeology and Linguistics at Occidental College, which I used to live near. So I'm all about that. Um. She says, you know what I think, And and she even did like this three D renderings to sort of prove her point. She said, I think she was a regular lady who was weaving um thread. And she said, if you look at the angle of the back and and ladies were doing all this textile work back then, if you look at her positioning and the way she was leaning and even where exactly she was looking. It looks to me like she was spinning thread. And they if you, you know, if you look online, she has their pictures of her three D rendered spinning the thread and it looks real enough to me for someone who knows nothing about spent the thread spinning. Well. Also, not only that, apparently the musculature of her shoulders and arms, um, would be about what you would expect for somebody who was spinning. She makes a weird position. Yeah, well, she makes a really good case. But also she this doesn't even need to be a statue of just an ordinary person because apparently she says Aphrodite was also the goddess of spinning, well, the goddess of procreation and love. Um, so this would fit still anyway. Yeah, that's a good point. Um. I did see another thing that said, you know, from the angle of her back that they said, it's one of those things where retroactically you look back and it's like, you know, did Mona Lisa have a disease or something? And they said, did Venus de Milo have some sort of spinal condition? Because when you look at the way her back is twisted and angled. It is a very irregular um route for the spine. But you know it's also a statue. Is it one of those things that would be that would be explained by the spinning position? Well, I mean it, she says. It matches what could have been a spinning position. But a spinning position could have been hard on your back. Maybe, I don't know. I would guess it would be hard on your back for sure. It doesn't sound like something I'd wanted to so the Venus de Milo. If you haven't ever seen it, go see it. It's pretty neat. It's in the loop. You can get there pretty easily, especially if you're vaccinated against COVID nineteen. Good test. Uh, since I said COVID nineteen, everybody that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.